For me, it was the first time using the video capabilities of my Nikon SLR camera and found, to my surprise, that it behaved very differently from all other video cameras I had used in the past. The crash reading I had done the night before and during that day were not enough to avoid mistakes during the filming of our event.
I made several mistakes that were extremely costly and painful. Unfortunately I screwed up the first segment, the one where Ola Nowosad introduced Frank. Everything was going quite well until for some reason I decided to change the focus, but because of the small screen of the camera I didn't realize the image had become blurry until I started editing. So that's the reason you won't see the film of Frank's introduction.
Then I made several other mistakes which I will not tell you about in detail or these notes would take many pages. Let me just say that I regret the fact that Frank's reading was cut short because I only had good copy of his second and third poems. Sorry.
Finally, I would like to thank Andreas Gripp, who on that evening read with such conviction and confidence, for accepting that we publish the segment which, against his instructions, I filmed by mistake. In this case, we could say it was a good mistake.
On the part of all of us at London Open Mic Poetry Night, I want to thank everyone of the readers who accepted to be filmed and also promise that in the future there will be fewer mistakes. At least that is the plan. Erik
Stan: I take no responsibility for this. I want to say right now at the start that doing videos at the open mic was entirely Erik Martinez Richards' idea. I had no part in it. He is using his own camera. He bought the software to produce it. He is making his own mistakes. And he is causing himself a lot of anxiety while I sit here completely relaxed. And also, let's face it, he is providing a wonderful addition to the open mic. There's no getting away from it. In future anyone who liked a poem someone read, but maybe it was read too fast for them or they got distracted and missed a couple lines, will get to see it all over again, assuming the poet allowed it to be taped. And now we have archives. A Great Pyramid is being built over the Mykonos Restaurant. That's right -- in London, Ontario.